~ my Potato Point life

Tag Archives: Tuross River

The huge tree is bare, but budding. Forty years ago when we first arrived in the Eurobodalla it was a small sapling, enclosed by a wire cage to protect it from dairy cows.

Just below the tree, about a kilometre from the bush block where my children grew up, the Tuross River makes its way to the sea. At the moment it flows gently, the sound of the mini-rapids just audible from the bridge. Sometimes it roars along, rising over the bridge, covering the riverside reserve, and once dramatically inching its way up the hill where we used to have a market garden. In severe drought it wavers to a bare trickle. Always it winds its way through the autobiography of my family.

On baking summer afternoons long ago we headed down to the deep pool near the jumping log. Little heads bobbed around in the shade of the casuarinas: arms flapped energetically, supported by yellow floaties.The big girl from the farm across the road appeared and soon the eldest daughter was swimming confidently under her no-nonsense tutelage. As the years passed, the older kids scrambled down the bank through brambles to the log and jumped off with a mighty splash. One afternoon we shared the snorkels and goggles and practised underwater observation on the very long eel, who retreated amongst the tree roots to escape the crowd.

During severe drought, the river all but disappeared. The farmer over the road dug a deep narrow channel and suddenly there was water. The children loved lying back and being carried along. Brown Surprise, on the other hand, thought they were drowning and ran up and down above them barking madly. At the end of the day, we’d take down barrels to collect water: our thousand gallon tank was nearly empty and there were six of us drawing on the limited supply. When a nit infestation invaded the house, we took all the bedding to the river, and washed it there. Our kids delighted in telling their townie classmates that they were drinking our bath water and washing water.

Slowly the kids grew up. Soon they were old enough to ride their bikes down to the river to meet their mates, and get up to all sorts of mischief. At night, they camped on the stretch of sand and occasionally went eeling. They discovered that a bread and butter knife was no use for eel-murder and threw the eel back to the roots below the water.

One day they rescued a baby crane from the sandy bank. They christened him Spike, after his hostile headgear rather than his excessive beak. He adopted their father as his, and decided the laundry was his nest. He attacked feet if they were bare when he was hungry, clacking at them sideways. If he squawked and clacked enough, Dad would stuff mince meat down his throat till his neck looked like a blocked vacuum cleaner hose. Then he was bunged outside before he began shaking his head to check that it was properly dead and dispersed it in a rough circle around him. When his neck was empty, he’d run around in circles, wings extended, squawking. His diet was obviously lacking, because he got rickets, staggering around on his knee joints till we dosed him on pentavite and sunshine. One morning he woke everyone up by systematically flinging and pinging drill bits he’d found in an ice cream container against the washing machine and soon after he swallowed a bolt from the tool box. My daughter stuck her fist down his throat and removed it, and then fed him milk to soothe the lacerations. He finally disappeared on New Year’s Eve, although there have been family tales of encounters with a crane who “seemed to know me.”

In the days of the market garden, I spent a lot of time by the river. I pulled up carrots and beetroot from the rich dirt of the river flats and took a load to wash, dragging it in a basket down the grassy track. At the end of a hot busy day picking, planting or weeding, we’d all fling ourselves in for a cooling wallow.

Immersed in post-separation misery, I set out to paint the house. After a morning session with the paint brush, I’d take myself down to the waterhole and plunge in. It was strange being there alone, in the middle of the day. I splashed around, contemplating the sudden change in my life, wondering how to ease my way into accepting its new shape with grace, and pleased by the undemanding physicality of cool water on bare skin.

When I arrived in Broken Hill to take up my teaching career, I went to professional training and suddenly found myself being asked to meditate, using a special place of calm to anchor me. I chose this bit of river, and suddenly found myself tearful and homesick.

The children have all gone away from the river now, except for Christmas visits. When they congregate, we lounge by the river, the grandchildren frolic with the dogs, and sometimes the kayaks are lifted off the roof and fishing lines are unreeled.

Sometimes the ageing parents (us) take chairs, glasses and a bottle of wine and sit in the reserve above the river as the stars come out, and the last light ripples in water darkening above the sand. Occasionally on a very hot night, we sit in the deep pool near the bridge and reminisce.

This theme gives me an opportunity to bridge my last few days between the Tuross River in southern NSW and the Wisła in Warsaw. I can also anticipate my imminent adventure, which will take me away from the Tuross, to the Danube and the Vltava and back to the Wisła in spring.

The boat – the real boat – now has a continuous rail underneath, making it easy to slide up the hillside, onto the ute and into the water. However, our first attempt to launch it it at Comerang bridge bogged the ute in sand. With the help of rearranged pebbles, a raincoat, spare trousers, and a young kayakker camping with his mates nearby, we unbogged, parked on firm road and tugged the boat down sand for its second launch. I arranged myself in the stern with space to stretch my legs along the inside decking, which is now in place, although still unglued. I lounged back against a cushion like a nineteenth century lady, although I didn't have a frilled parasol and an elegant dress, elegantly draped: just a hat that makes me look like a charmless lampshade and a life jacket to guard against mishaps.

We skimmed under the bridge and headed off down the river, trying to match the banks against the Eurobodalla road that has been our familiar artery now for 40 years. We recalled the evil poaching days of our youth when we used to string a net across the river with the help of the Bismarck, half a 44 gallon drum and all the boat we could afford. We'd throw a haul of mullet on the barbie: fresh, they tasted wonderful, without any of the despised mud flavor.

We rowed down the river seeing the world in unfamiliar dimensions. Down … the replicating reflections, undisturbed until oar ripples reached them. Through … shimmering patches of light to a sandy bottom. Out … to a line of mountains, changing position and visibility with every curve of the river: Comerang, Gulaga, Hanging Mountain, Sugarloaf. Mistletoe blossoms floated by and so did tiny amoeba-shaped sand islands: when they were tapped with an oar, grains of sand detached and disappeared down into the water. A flash of orange proved to be an azure kingfisher, and water monitors lounged on dead logs, heads alert. Large dark fish shapes zapped through the water as we zigzagged our way around sand bars, at one point gouging a track in the sand which was still visible when we returned by the same route.

It was a sand bar that stopped us after about 4 kilometres and we headed back to launch point. One of the kayakkers came over to lend his hefty youth to the business of reloading the boat on the ute, and it flew along the sand and up the ramp.

Sunday

It's a long weekend, so we went out early to avoid holiday crowds. We launched near Bumbo bridge, and headed upriver to meet the end point of yesterday's row. As we we putting the boat in the water the sun caught a flash of iridescent green as a flight of ducks took off.

The early morning light and a gentle wind gave us shivering reflections, unlike yesterday's still ones: the rusty stamens of casuarinas, the white pea flowers of black locust, the intermittent patches of green bank, the delicate fronds of maiden hair fern, the pale trunks of eucalypts. A pair of hawks crisscrossed the river ahead of us; three plovers (species to be determined) flew beside us, red legs trailing; pelicans cruised along the other bank; a kingfisher's call was very near, but we couldn't spot the elusive songster.

A black and white cow peered at us curiously through the low branches of a tree and we were amused until we saw another cow, obviously trapped, struggling to get out of the river. We turned around, with one reach to go to meet yesterday's row, looking for landmarks so we could find the farmer and let him know. The granite church at Bodalla looming in the distance gave us the necessary orientation.

We rowed back lazily against tide and freshening wind, and into the hotting-up sun. The oars created miniature whirlpools and dropped circles of ripples onto the ruffled surface. Their shadows appeared on the sand below us. The rower changed position to scull, but a few adjustments need to be made before he can scull effectively.

Movement caught our attention. A head was looking at us, attached to a sinuous body coiling along the surface of the water. As we debated its markings – python? or tiger snake? … hard to tell for sure when the pattern was wet – it changed direction and began heading towards us, drawn by the vibration of oars and the movement of the boat. We backed off, until it lost interest and retreated to a dead tree. A python in the boat could be charming: not so a tiger snake.

Our predictions of crowds at the launching place proved wrong, as predictions usually do. We tugged our boat out without drama, although not without effort, and headed off to find the farmer, a beer and an afternoon doze. I don't know why lounging back and lazy looking is so fatiguing. I haven't even touched the oars yet.

Monday

Plans for a Monday row were aborted by the weather forecast: rain and high winds. I like the sense of being dominated by nature in this way, needing to know what it's up to and accommodating it.

Note: The forecast was wrong! It was a beautiful sunny day with a light wind, but gluing in the decking, raking up and burning off took precedence over boating.

This blog has been brought to you without photos because, sadly, my dunking last weekend killed our boating camera. I have a sneaking suspicion that I see more and store more when I'm not depending on the camera as an adjunct memory and set of eyes.

At the beginning of October we visited a patch of grand old casuarinas beside the river. On a dead fallen one, very close to the river bank we found four patches of distinctive thick fleshy leaves with very noticeable parallel furrows.

We’ve been visiting these leaves for a few weeks, not very hopeful of flowering, since they are quite exposed. However, orchids again proved themselves to be tough customers capable of unexpected survival and there were sprays of buds visible from the ground.

Some of them were flowering, but as is the way of things one really wants to photograph they were a bit inaccessible.

We spent a long time peering into the casuarinas further from the river, without spotting more orchids, although they must be there (that’s the orchid spotter’s refrain!)

A week later we visited again, this time with an extension ladder and three cameras. Our eccentricity was rewarded.